It's Not all about Wine

  Monday July 1st's adventures started out at Richie's Diner. Richie's is a chain diner that doesn't taste like it. We start here because the next leg of this trip was to a distilling facility. So... you ask your self, what did Matt and Carol have for lunch today?

We started out with drinks, I had a Pomegranate Lemonade, Carol had a Cappuccino Milk Shake. If you look at the photo on the right, you'll notice onion rings in the background, that is half the order. The order was six gigantic rings wrapped in a heavy tempura batter. I like my onion rings, but I could not finish them without Carol's help. The main courses came out next. Carol had the Sourdough Burger, freshly made, with grilled onions and fries. The burger was good, and she was able to taste the sourdough flavor of the bread. I had meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and cream corn. Everything on my plate, except for the bread, was made that day. The meatloaf was made from turkey meat, and had bell peppers and onions running through it. You're probably thinking it was dry, you would be wrong, it didn't need the brown gravy that was slather on it and the potatoes. The mashed potatoes were real potatoes whipped  smooth. For me the sweet cream corn was the star. They used sweet corn, and made their own cream sauce. The cream sauce was thick, and had a sweet flavor. My guess was they used heavy cream with some sugar, then stirred in the corn during the cooking process. I would have been happy with just a pint of the sweet cream corn.

Can you see our next stop? It's right in front of you. If you stare intently at the first blue pillar you can see it, that's right, Kalifornia Distillers. Let's go inside. These folks have been in operation since 2013. Currently they distill six forms of spirits, they are considered moonshine. I am going to back track a bit regarding this distillery, they are family owned. The family had been making illegal moonshine for over 200 years in Ireland and America, until they went legit in 2013. Their product is in such demand that they are currently looking at expanding their operations to another location with a larger facility. If you come for the tasting they will start off with their highest percent alcohol, and work to their lower, after that you receive two cocktails (of your choice) made from their products. They produce an Unaged moonshine which is 50% alcohol content, Bourbon 40% alcohol content, Vodka 40% content, Apple Pie, Peach Pie, and Lemonade moonshines, all at 22.5% alcohol content.

These products were nothing like moonshine I had ever tried before.  If you have ever tried bad moonshine, you know it is like drinking acetone. Their products were very smooth and did not have that burn going down. Yes, for those wondering, we did take those four bottles home, just never know when one will get back this way. It was a relaxing couple of hours.

We took our lunch leftovers (from the diner) and went home for the night.